Wednesday, 4 January 2012

The Drowned Out Voice – A warning to the e-curious

The online queue of aspiring writers – committed and otherwise – is growing at a phenomenal rate.This situation – for that is what it is – begs many new questions.One I wish to focus on concerns a transparent void, once filled out of necessity.

Prior to the Net, it had been the responsibility of hardcopy publishing houses to oversee the proofreading and editing of a new author’s work, alongside those already on their books.Now, new technology has enabled the rookie to do this him or herself, with no recourse to a second, professional opinion.

Yes, this situation predates the Net.Virgin’s publishing arm dispensed with the nit-picking inconvenience of having a proof-reader/editor back in the late 80s’.This became discernible in their youth fiction range, where a horribly obvious ‘typo’ appeared on almost every other page.(I say ‘horribly obvious’ in that the offending misspelled word was often a simple noun of no more than two syllables).Taking a leaf out of Virgin’s cost cutting exercise, other publishers quickly followed suit.The result has been the greatest misuse of print English since the 17th century.Only the likes of Harper Collins – a publishing house with whom I have other issues – and their many subsidiaries, maintain a high level in print grammar; especially in the lines of biography and other non-fiction.

For mischievous checkers here, and as an up-loader to Amazon Kindle myself, I am as guilty of typos as anyone.Although my own errors are miniscule compared to those let through by Virgin for a generation, and typical of most writers who can’t afford their own staff.

This is symptomatic of a larger problem.The every-man-for-himself approach may be deemed the democratisation of literature; where everyone capable of forefinger typing can have a voice on a par with everyone else.In truth, this merely ensures the market drowns beneath a welter of voices of varying quality and legitimacy.This, of course, begs a secondary question: who says which literature is ‘legitimate’?

The answer is simple and one that brings us full circle - it must be the publisher.So, the solution is for unapologetic quality control administrators on respected literary sites who have real experience in proof-reader editing.Yes, this will mean rejection for some rookies.That’s tough; but as has always been the case, if you are serious about writing, then you go away, improve your writing style, and come up with a proposal or six that can, somewhere, gain acceptance.The rest of us can continue plying our wares on Amazon.

I don’t knock all users.It is wonderful, and probably necessary, that a man or woman of any age, any background and any home, who harbour a real talent, can access a vehicle to advertise and display their work to anyone else.But, imagine this same situation before the Net; a situation where everyone who submitted got published; where submission alone was publication.Who among us, as buyers, would partake of such longwinded, unfocused searching?To eagerly spend our hard-earned cash on anything and everything, taking such a chance on unlimited product, whatever the quality?All authors would quickly lose what credibility they had – as would the book trade.Perhaps, in the end, endless opportunity is no opportunity at all.

The problem lies in the fact that the Net is not a writer’s one-stop shop. It is a single, gigantic entity made up of an unlimited number of websites and users. The ultimate democratisation, and, right now, the ultimate mess.